In Greek mythology, Artemis is both the healer and the inflictor of plagues. It’s kind of a contradiction if you look at it wrong; a doctor injecting her patients with sickness and taking it away by turns. Like–how can anyone do that? Hold two parts of themselves together without hurting inside?

Claire didn’t understand it when she was eight, sitting on her aunt’s study floor and paging through a book of mythology, but she does now.

It’s like this: she knows how to break a bone because she knows how to mend one. And sometimes you get tired of seeing victims rolled in on gurneys, peppered with lead and splintered with rebar. Sometimes you think–you know, maybe. Maybe it’s better to step out there and do something about it.

She thinks Artemis would have understood that, too.

It’s night in New York City, and Claire gets wind of a drug ring. Wraps her hands in boxer’s tape, picks up her aluminum baseball bat and puts on her running shoes. They’re great, these shoes. Hot pink and kind of perfect in how un-Claire-like they are. They hide under her bed until she needs them.

(It figures that she doesn’t wear stars or stripes or armor like the knights of old–just cheap body armor and a battered pair of Nikes. Claire’s not up there in the sky with a million dollars. She’s not in some old news reel. She’s just herself, this heart, this breath, these two hands that break arms at the elbow.)

The problem starts when she gets to the base. It’s broken open, the door hanging pathetically off the hinges. Claire hefts her bat, squares her shoulders, and walks in.

There’s a man in there, and he’s the only one standing. He swings around when she comes in, and she amends her observation.

He’s the only one standing, barely.

“You look like shit,” she says.

“Who,” the man says. His eyes are covered by a black cloth. “Who are you?”

“I’m the Night Nurse,” Claire says. “Who the hell are you?”

“Are you here to finish the job?” he asks, and the weariness in his tone makes her ache.

“It looks like you beat me to the punch,” Claire says lightly, sweeping a hand around at all the unconscious drug smugglers. “So, no. Unless you’re one of them.”

“No,” the man says. He’s still breathing hard, and that’s definitely blood on his chin. Claire gestures to it.

“Broken tooth?”

“Bit my tongue.”

“Ah.”

Silence falls, heavy and cold, like wet sheets. The man’s ragged breathing is starting to sound an awful lot like cracked ribs. He wipes the blood off his chin with hands that are also bleeding.

“You know,” Claire says, “I’m pretty good with stitches.”

His head snaps up. Through the cloth, in this light, it’s hard to tell what his expression is.

“No way you’re getting home like that,” she says.

“I have before,” the man says.

It’s just her luck, isn’t it, that the only other vigilante in the neighborhood is stupid as shit. “Fast track to an early grave, if you ask me.”

“And you would know.”

“Yes,” Claire says, lifting her chin. “I would know.”

The man’s laugh breaks into pieces halfway through and he hunches over, white beneath the mask, one hand going to his side and trembling. Definitely cracked ribs.

“Come on,” Claire says, tired of this, “I’ll make coffee, we can talk about walking on the wrong side of the law.”

He smiles. It’s a nice look on him, despite the swollen lip and the bruises blossoming across his face. “Coffee, huh?”

“Unless you’re a tea person.”

He nods, a tiny thing, and starts to limp across the floor towards her. Claire meets him halfway, holding out an arm. He looks at her–looks at her left ear, actually, but that’s probably the concussion–and then rests his fingers on her elbow. Together, picking their way around unconscious criminals, the two of them make their way out the door, into the wet, windless night.

Claire knows this is stupid. He could be anyone. But she can handle a half-dead vigilante if she has to, and it she doesn’t, well–

Artemis rarely hunted alone. She’s coming to understand that, too.